


mini fitziers

by xRinsexRepeatx



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Character Study, Impotence, Introspection, M/M, Pining, Scurvy, the regular fun bag, very victorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xRinsexRepeatx/pseuds/xRinsexRepeatx
Summary: a series of tiny fics where I mostly exorcise my need to see them Yearn
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Bitter

He could taste the gin on the other man's heavy exhale before he even pressed on for their mouths to join. James sprawled heavy and loose-limbed against the door, eyes glazed and stupid with drink, fading in and out of defiance against the long limb of a law that could no longer reach any of them.

Francis held him by the weight of his own body, and James allowed it passively, as if not wanting to interrupt the series of events but not considering himself any real part of it. It was only a brief moment before Francis let his mouth trail to James' jaw instead, the lazy response half a beat belated unsettling against his own fervor.

Francis fingers finally found their way to heated skin, as his tongue tasted salt and heady undertones at the dip of James' throat. He could want this enough for both of them.


	2. Yellow

It did not take long for the wretched place to teach James that white was the most violent colour. 

In times before, when he had thought that frost upon a window did somehow mean real cold was present, he'd used to fancy, to himself, that white might be the colour of courage. It had pleased him how the metaphor could be extended with yellowing of cowardice, how courage required upkeep of character, as for one not to succumb to the same as all things did when left to time. Back then courage had been a fancy, something that lived in stories and songs, worthy of praise, rather than being the very foundation of survival that it now had become.

This place was violent, unforgiving, and direct. A miserable place. A place where men like Francis, with so many traits so very undesirable in polite society, could stand against that starkness and show to be no lesser to it, and men like James most uncharitably did.

James knew there was no white inside him. The red of passions, most certainly; the black of despair creeping up slowly as the arctic winter nights went by, the longer they were stuck in the ice. He knew he shared these colours with the captain, with all of the men.

But next to them, next to Francis, the colour that contrasted and inevitably became the one that defined him, was that colour that he most despised, the one he could not ban from himself no matter the effort, for it was something that had settled into his every untempered surface. He was a man who had never been forged, had never had the brittle hammered out of him by harsher circumstance.

He looked at himself, next to all these men of white, and saw that he was yellow.


	3. Illuminate

The arctic light was at constant extremes. It was either so bright it pained the eyes, or so dark, for so long, that he longed even for that ache.

It was a world away from the golden brightness of the lamp that warmed the dusty color of the inside of Francis' tent, and softly let the corners fall away into silky dark. It was something else entire, man-made light. It fell upon the captain's face with impunity, caused valleys of stark shadow in each furrow on his brow, the bags under his eyes, and every crater in his skin, bitten by both freezing winds and age. Just as easily, it caused his pale eyelashes to shine with refracted light like the spread tail of a dove, and bestowed his cheeks with a hearty glow reminiscent of home.

Seeing his captain this way, _seeing_ him this way, would have plagued James in the time before.

But as it was, as they were, at the end of the world, he simply drank his fill.


	4. Torch

James' arms were aching all the way up to his chest where he was, standing on all fours on Francis' berth. Francis was grunting behind him, fucking into him at a determined pace that had been going on for much too long. Finally, he sped up slightly, finishing with a relieved groan that coursed through James as if it was his own satisfaction, even as his own organ had stayed limp throughout their encounter. There was moisture along his brow, on his forehead. Nothing but sweat. He willed it so.

Francis slipped out of him and fell onto his side along the wall, pulling James along with an arm around his waist so that they laid chest to back, Francis' nose grazing his nape, huffing at his hair.

This was starting to lose the point. Getting rid of frustrations, forgetting themselves. There could be none of that now, as they were, worn down to the pulp by their respective ills. James said as much, pushing his voice out into the thick silence.

He imagined he felt the cold on his neck when Francis took a deep breath, and adjusted the arm he'd kept over James' middle.

"You'd go to someone else, then?"

James pushes a gust of air out, a tired excuse for a laugh.

"There would be even less reason for that." He let the words hang in the air, cold, still. It was a ridiculous question, and he couldn't believe Francis could really be blind to it. "Surely you should know as much."

A moment. Francis hands moves down James body, and cups his groin as when protecting one's own modesty. Proprietary, natural, then brings his hand up the length of James body wide and slow, over the concaveness of his abdomen, fingers following the quick dips and dents of his ribs along his median.

"I'll have you," he rumbles in that damnable brogue, rougher for the restrain in volume, a hair above a whisper. "Regardless, I'll have you."

His hand comes to rest high on James' chest, heavy and warm.  
Even though he couldn't keep count of how many times they'd done this, James had never felt Francis' lips upon his own, hadn't felt him sigh across them, or the tip of his tongue. He didn't want it now, felt it more pertinent to keep the sore sockets of his teeth and constant metal taste of it to himself.

"And I'll come."

He shifts, and he wants to move his hand up to join Francis' fingers with his own, to squeeze his hand with all his diminished might, and to hold on forever. But he refrains, even as it aches him to do so.

Instead, he soaks in the quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are love <3


End file.
